Some courtroom moments
“Hmm, nice picture.”
Defendant Harold Simmons, holding up his driver’s license, recovered from the floor of the bank he was accused of robbing.
"He said you’re a sneaky son-of-a-bitch but just tell the truth and you can’t hurt me."
Defendant answering prosecutor’s question, “What did your lawyer tell you to say?” after Attorney Charles Garry (later David’s boss in the Bobby Seale trial) got permission to confer with the defendant during cross examination.
Judge Frank Kinney, a notoriously harsh sentencer: “You aren’t trying to postpone this case until I leave, are you, Mr. Rosen?”
David: “Oh no, Your Honor, I saw the sign outside the courtoom, ‘lasciate ogni speranci ch’entrate.’”
Judge: “What does that mean?”
David: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”
Judge: “It’s not that bad, Mr. Rosen.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the Philbrook case: “But it’s acceptable to you so long as they list all of the conceivable nonreligious purposes, and fail to list any religious purposes? As long as they just list nothing but secular observances, that’s okay, or may be ok?”
David: “The line I suggest would not be particularity but comparability, Justice Scalia; that if commemoration of the death of loved ones is permissible, and that commemoration takes the form of observance of a religious holy day, I would say that exclusion of the religious holy day is discriminatory.”
Justice Scalia: “I see.”
Trial court judge’s only comment after listening silently to David’s argument about a then-new Supreme Court search-and-seizure case.
“Sounds like mumbo jumbo to me.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in Roe v. Norton, after the Justices asked many questions about an issue that had not been raised in the briefs or the court below: “Mr. Rosen, you offered to write a brief on that issue. That would be very helpful from my point of view.”
Justice Byron White, about the proposed brief: “Are you also going to argue that the State waived its Younger v. Harris argument?”
David: “Well, I will say that they already waived it because you made that suggestion to me.”
Cross examiner to David’s expert witness Jon K. Peck, a statistician: “That’s not statistics. That’s just common sense.”
Professor Peck: “All statistics is just common sense.”